Asylum Fun

Well, here's a thing: despite all those Liberal Democrat protests which have been so vociferous these past few months that nobody has heard them, Daveybloke's Cuddly Conservatives are dragging their feet over ending the incarceration of children. In July, Daveybloke's orange muffler called the practice of imprisoning infant resources, even immigrant infant resources, a "moral outrage", and last month the new Phil Woolas promised to end it by December, in favour of the more humane and civilised practice of upping the dawn raids and making a bit more haste over kicking the families out of the country; but the Government has now decided that it can in good conscience wait until next spring before doing anything much. Britain's leading liberal newspaper states optimistically that Daveybloke's orange muffler will suffer "embarrassment" over the delay.

Meanwhile, the Ministry of Justice has produced a business plan (sic) confirming its intention "to explore alternative forms of residential treatment for thousands of drug and mentally ill offenders who are currently being jailed". Asylum space for these expendables should become available by December next year, "subject to the important proviso of Department of Health funding being available" after a year's worth of redundancies have had their vitalising effect upon the nation's wellbeing. The idea seems to be that the NHS should use whatever savings it can make from rota adjustments over the next twelve months to take Yarl's Wood off the UK Border Agency's hands, and then re-train some nice, stout Serco chaps in the finer points of making death by state-sponsored mugging look like death from a drug overdose. We must hope, in the meantime, that there is no pandemic of headlines sexing up some new disease and asking why addicts and loonies are being treated while the white working class is left at the mercy of Dacre's colic.